July 8, 2010

Parenting: The Case for Keeping Out

Mine is famously a generation of worrisome and worrying parents, fearful for our children's futures and so obsessed with safety that we soak them in antibacterial soaps from birth. 

We seat-belt and helmet them, childproof and V-chip them, buy whole-grain cupcakes and hypoallergenic sheets and instruct them in stranger danger. 

Except now we know that our obsessions may have made them more vulnerable, that a little dirt is a good thing, that kids may be developing more allergies because we've raised them too clean. 

They get older and smarter and restless and start poking around in the wider world. 
And now the challenge to us is both technological and philosophical. 
In how many ways can we continue to watch over them? 

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